The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Fellow 17 R3 owners, have you experienced any problems with the 180W power supply with the GTX970? Mine seems to be Ok, but I was wandering if I should still request the 240W from Dell! I appreciate any suggestions.
Dell gave me a 240W with my order (maybe due to GTX 980M 8GB?), but I think my brother is getting a 17 R3 from Amazon with 180W and GTX 970M. I'll be sure to ask him how it goes.
Dell 330W Power Adapter for my 17R3? (OC'ed CPU + GPU)
Yay? Nay?
1. How much power does the 17R3 draw? Stock _____W and OC'ed _____W?
2. The stock 240W seems sufficient...however, I'm thinking if the 330W would provide any benefits? If so, could someone provide the details?
* I've skimmed through the threads and it was mentioned that the higher wattage power bank may be beneficial for OC etc....although it doesn't draw that much power, just having the higher capacity. .....????
I can't imagine needing more than a 240w adapter unless you're overvolting. I can run at 4ghz on cpu without adding extra volt. So the only other place is the gpu, which I can't imagine you'd be able to overvolt to an extent where the gain to heat ratio is worth it.
Note: If buying the m.2 screws individually, make sure the shaft of the screw is 2mm....the m.2x3mm can be misleading as only the head is 3mm, but the shaft must be 2mm.
I'll check mine when I get home, but I think all batteries start with some level of wear after a cycle or two. If I remember right, my GS60 for example showed 0% at first but hit 15% after the first couple cycles. 18 months later it's now at 17%.
It's calculated from a comparison of the factory spec vs the actual level that's detected by software. So there's bound to be some level of wear in all our batteries right from the start, especially if the factory spec is slightly off from what the battery maker was able to create in reality. In the case of my GS60, I think they just have the wrong factory spec in their battery because absolutely nobody had wear under 13-15%. It's not that the batteries were "worn" from the start it's just they had a much lower capacity than what they requested. Physically looking at the battery, I could see why - it was basically a plastic bag filled with Li-polymer.
If my math is correct, here is my numbers when adding up the power consumption: ~160.956W
Even the 180W would seem like it would be more than enough and definitely the 240W would be way more than enough. However, from the bits and pieces that I've been gathering, it is said to be a benefit to be using a power adapter that is much higher with its capacity than to be flying near the ceiling, which has been known to cause issues...less heat due to it not having to work at max rpm's all the time during gaming? Then there was something about heat....next was the ability of a higher watt adapter to provide sufficient charging + power when gaming...
Ex...there were some 180W power adapters that were shipped with the previous gen AW's and due to some chaos with that, Dell opened it up to send out 240W adapters upon request. Then there are the OC'ers who've switched to the 330W (from the R18) with reports of it having corrected whatever issue they were dealing with....
Since our CPU and GPU's have a voltage limiter....using the 300W power adapter would equate to, "no loss, no gain?"
I was able to obtain a Dell 330W adapter so instead of hauling my stock 240W charger with me every time, I was going to just leave the 330W at the office.
* A lot of my curiosity in all of this is just to satisfy my OCD....in wanting to know all the in's and out's...well and to make sure there are absolutely zero risks in using the 330W on my 17R3.
Hey guys, I've noticed a lot of special install instructions for getting a Samsung 950 Pro installed into an Alienware 17r3, but is that really necessary? In your opinion, will it really make that much of a difference to install a 950 vs an Evo 850? It's only $160 for a 500GB Samsung Evo M.2 right now and about twice that much for the 950.
Please excuse my tech illiteracy, I'm really good with software and I'm learning hardware. I've already learned a LOT from you guys!!
I've googled and researched this Ad Nauseum, and there are many different opinions on the matter. Some say the 950 heats up too much to be safe for notebooks, some say it's overkill because of limits on the motherboard. Others say its amazing and the write speeds are glorious.
Please share which M.2 SSD you have in your Alienware 17r3, how you installed it, and if you think it's actually worth the effort/cash to upgrade from the OEM samsung SSD they're tossing in these.
First of all, 950 pro vs 850 evo. 950 pro is roughly 4x faster if not even more so than 850 evo. You want/need speed, 950 is way to go.
owning 950 pro in mine, I just clones stock 256, raid bios, and whatever. If your not or if you don't have anything to write to it that fast, probably only going to notice maybe a second or two faster windows/app/program load. If you do have abilty to write from or to the 950 at lets say 2500 mbsp, then transfer speeds now quadroupled.
850 evo, is still good and a whole lot cheaper. So if the above stated gains don't warrant the cost for your personally, then get the evo.
I got a 2.5" SATA 500GB 850 Evo dirt cheap from Amazon on Black Friday (the day I ordered my 17 R3) and it works great. 10 second boot (although login takes longer) and pretty fast load times in games. Maybe someday I will upgrade to an even faster m.2 drive, but for now I am happy.
I have both! First I want to say they both great quality ssd's. The stories about the 950 overheating are garbage! I use as my main drive and it does not overheat! Plus Samsung has put in thermal controls if it came to that. Now, do I notice a difference between the two speed wise? For sure! The 950 PRO is absolutely blazing fast but the 850 EVO is not behind by much!
Well said. It depends on the needs. For everyday use...heck even for gaming you won't really notice much if at all between the two.
I also have the 950 in mine and I went with the 950, because I work with a lot of large files. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but the memory (component) in the 950 is also different (superior) to the one in the 850, hence the longer warranty offered with the 950's. However, we're talking about the top two SSD's so it's not like a loss in anyway. 850 or 950, you can't go wrong.
Here is a
thread you can check out for some speeds.
MLC vs TLC nand. This is the main difference that matters in everyday workload over long time. It depends on how hard the workload you have. Always a reason why SSD's with TLC nand always are cheaper.
Papusan, I had quite a hard time installing the Samsung 950 Pro. I had to clean install windows 10 and could not get my pc to boot from the recovery USB stick. Finally after much research I was able to but to this day my bios do not see the 950 and also the Intel Rapid storage does not show it. However windows does recognize it and so does the Samsung Magician. Probably much easier to install the 850 Evo.
I think I have seen a guide for correct installation of 950 Pro for your Aw in the forum. Do not believe none laptops from any brand has bios versions with this information available. I run my 950 in Raid 0 and disks does not appear in the Sky X bios . But all my disks appear with info in IRST.
I see! Well it is strange when I set up my bios to raid then the 950 did show in the bios but the Samsung Magician software was no longer working, So I went back to AHCI . You must get insane scores from your 950 pro 0 raid set up!
You could get the 950 pro 256GB for less then $200 if you shop around. Got mine at Fry's for $169 plus tax on sale! I saw the guide for the correct installation in the forum but I found complicated and difficult to follow. I did clean Windows install, set AHCI, downloaded Samsung Magician and driver for the 950 pro from the Samsung site.
Yeah but Raid is more for servers/large files. I would still be happy with only 850 Pro drives in my new BGA killer. But why invest in old tech when new ones appear. My only criteria are no disks with TLC nand. Drives with TLC nand does not come in my house.
From what I've read in reviews that compare real world 950 Pro vs SATA 3 SSD performance there is not a significant difference - for things like the time it takes to load games / boot the computer / program loading. 950 Pro might be useful to you if you transfer a lot of large files backwards & forwards and perhaps video editing, but I don't think it's worth buying a PCIe SSD at this point. There is a big difference in benchmarks though, but random writes are not very good IIRC and some SATA 3 SSDs are better in that respect.
My thoughts exactly. I've been testing a lot of laptops and I've seen good pcie drives, bad ones and sata ssds in raid. There's not a whole lot of real life difference from just having a good sata ssd, from what I can tell. There's a slight difference in large file transfers, but how often does that really matter?
Yeah, it doesn't matter for me, I don't do video editing & don't transfer large files - for me it's internet, gaming, office applications, and I don't need a PCIe SSD for that (not that they're compatible with my laptop for a start!)!
Even video editing generally doesn't require really fast disks, unless you're doing a lot of copying. Rendering is usually CPU/GPU bound. Something like Elasticsearch (or any large-scale lucene database) would benefit a lot from fast drives.
I don't mean I actually set up raid 0, the machine comes with the bios set to raid mode even with just one hard drive. In that mode then the 950 shows up in th bios as a drive. Swithcing to the ACHI mode and it it no longer shows in the bios as a drive!
Is anyone else's Alienware 17 R3 power jack kind of loose? When I plug in my 240W AC adapter, it wiggles side-to-side and up-and-down with barely any force. I'm worried for the long-term reliability of this.
Mine has 0 wiggle and neither has any laptop I've ever had. I'm at my desk at work with 5 thinkpads, none have any wiggle and they are ranging from 2 days old to 3years.
I dont mean the port itself ofcourse. But the plug has some play to the side after plugging it in. I had 3 Alienwares total in my possession and all had the same amount of play.
Mine has no wiggle, but it did fall out on its own the other day. I guess I must have caught the cord on something while setting the laptop down on my side table, which is to the right of where I sit.
I don't care for the fact that the jack is on the left side, as my side table and power come from the right side of where I sit. I'm also worried about the wear that this will cause.
A relative once had a Lenovo whose power jack broke from the power cord being inserted with too much force. The good news is I was able to fix it with a $6 replacement part from eBay, and the laptop's service manual was available on the Internet.
I was wondering if someone here can help me out. I have an AW 17R 3 6820HK, 980M, 4K ad when I am using the Microsoft edge browser the INTEL GPU drivers will crash and recover. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling from support.dell.com and from intel. I also allowed windows to auto install. Nothing has fixed this issue. Can anyone help or should I just turn off the Intel GPU? Thanks!
You can't turn off the Intel GPU unless you have an external monitor connected.
You can, however, try to force the nVidia GPU to handle running the browser if you want.
I get occasional Intel driver crashes myself. It's really annoying, but at least the Vista+ driver model allows Windows to recover instead of throwing up a BSoD. Optimus or whatever it's called just doesn't belong in a gaming laptop IMO, but we're stuck with it.
I had the same problem for a while. Just left it alone and now it has pretty much stopped. Just continue updating your drivers and let window do the updates and the problem might solve itself like mine did! Also why don't use chrome as your main browser as it seemed to very rarely crash there.!
Alienware 17 R3 (970M) can use older dell chargers? I have a PA-7E which fits the Alienware M15x and wondering if that can be used in the Alienware 17?
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
